A Bowl of Stupid

(Yours truly, with a portion of my new tattoo showing — it's a big triangular doohickey, with 10 smaller individual triangles, each representing the countries I've been to so far. Given the design, it leaves room for additional countries as I continue to travel. The necklace I'm wearing I got from a guy on Lombok who makes them out of clams — he puts a kernel of sand on the inside of the shell and comes back for it in a year or so, after which he cuts and polishes the shell containing the "half-pearl." I got it for about US$10.00.)

I’ll continue about my Indo trip in the next posts, but something that happened during my trip made me decide to write this entry – despite the possible repercussions.

As I mentioned elsewhere, after surfing and“camping” at Desert Point with a couple of Aussies for a number of days, I’ve taken up traveling with them for as long as we all see fit. However, it was only well after we made the decision to travel together that we (well, Mick more than I) realized that we had not even been introduced and did not even know each others’ names.

Given the circumstances, it seemed somewhat silly.

Such is also the case with this blog. While I’ve been writing, and a number of people have (presumably) been reading it for some time now, but for a select few fellow bloggers, I’ve never properly introduced myself. Early on in the blog, I even had people write and ask me if I was a man or women (aww yeah, I’m all man, baby!).

Initially, I chose to maintain my anonymity for fear of potential repercussions to my legal (or other potential) career.

After that ship sailed (and subsequently sank), I chose to maintain relative anonymity because it allows me to write with a certain forcefulness I may not have otherwise had the ability to use for fear of offending friends, family, stalkers, etc.

But given the direction taken by my life, and correspondingly, this blog, all of those reasons seem somewhat superfluous. Indeed, I’ve even started publishing pictures of myself in Singapore and elsewhere. So anonymity is probably not an issue anymore.

With that, allow me to introduce myself:

My name is Matthew Kish. I am a 37 year old male American citizen. I have brown hair, brown eyes, a terminally broken nose, and a terminally crooked smile. Overall, I am terminally “average.”

I like to beleive, however, that I am gifted with an above average intellect and insight into the human condition. As such, I made the decision to rebuke at least a portion of such normality (including my house, car and the majority of my earthly possessions), and I am currently living abroad in Southeast Asia and Oceania, with what I like to think of as a “home-base” in Singapore.

I was born and raised in Philadelphia by two loving parents who are still together after almost 45 years of marriage (personally, I think it’s only because my Dad’s hearing is gone … but I kid, I kid). I have one sister that used to be a broadcast journalist and now lives in Florida with her husband and their two little girls.

I left Philly in 1987 for Arizona, where I attended Arizona State for 4 years (or so) and graduated in 1991. After I graduated, I held several jobs in Arizona, Seattle, Portland, and Alaska – working on, among other things, various fishing and crabbing boats – before starting law school in San Diego in August 1993. I graduated law school in December 1995 (I did law school in 2.5 years, rather than the normal 3, as I thought it would help my prospects in the job market … yah, not so much).

I then worked at several small law firms in the San Diego area until moving to California’s Central Valley following the tailstrings of a then-serious girlfriend (cough, cough, bitch, cough). And while that move was a mistake on a variety on levels, it allowed me the opportunity to hone my legal skills at what I now know is a fairly decent law firm (it also allowed me to meet a variety of other people of whom I will always think fondly).

I eventually got tired of the very rural Central Valley and chose to move to South Florida, ostensibly to be closer to my sister and her then-new family (the main reason, however, was because I had lived in the other "3 corners" of the United States and I wanted to finish out the series). While there were issues with the ostensible purposes of that move as well, that also led me to meet friends in Miami for whom I also care deeply, and now consider family.

I lived in South Florida for 7 years practicing law and living an altogether over-indulgent lifestyle until last June, when I left my job and decided I did not want to practice law anymore and started, among other things, an over-indulgent personal blog — before I left the States to live abroad.

And I think that pretty much brings us up to speed. If you're interested in anything else, may I suggest you start at the beginning of this particular work of crap, and work your way back to this present post.

Sorry if I’ve bored you, but I just thought I should introduce myself before we move onward.

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